Freefalling
by BoloBouncer
Summary: While Cameron and Chase are away at a conference, House and Foreman work to explain an odd assortment of symptoms that have manifested in a professional trainer. A disgruntled grandson confronts House for frightening his eighty year old grandmother.
1. Chapter 1: Skydivers and Grandmothers

The sun shone through the back windows, and House wrote on the dry-erase board. He was dressed in his normal jacket and blue jeans with an untucked undershirt.

Foreman leaned forward and tapped the table.

"Bet you're missing Chase and Cameron about now," House said without turning around.

Foreman looked up. "You think I can't handle you without them?" He threw an incredulous look at House's back.

"I felt that."

"Felt what?" Foreman put his feet up.

"You just gave me your 'I'm going to jump you in the parking lot' look." House turned around and smirked. "But I've got a weapon." He rapped his cane on the table. "Besides, three more days and our conference attendees will be back. Then you guys can out and play in the sandbox. Until then, let's do the doctor thing. Shall we?"

Foreman shook his head.

"Ornery." House nodded toward the board. "What do we know?"

"Thirty-nine year old male." Foreman lifted a piece of paper. "Professional trainer. Likes to skydive."

"What do we know besides that?"

"Presents with high fever, intermittent memory loss, twitching of the hands and feet, and grinding of the teeth."

"Bruxism." House pursed his lips. "Has he always pretended to chew steak in his sleep, or is this some new cool kind of exercise regimen?"

"Says it started a week ago." Foreman stood up and walked to the end of the table.

House clucked his tongue. "So, I'm going with exercise regimen. Now we need to find out why Mr. Freefall can't stop moving his hands and feet."

"Carpopedal spasms can be linked to several different things," Foreman said matter-of-factly.

House looked at him. "Yes, but what links that thing to bruxism?"

Foreman shrugged.

"Ok, how about his baking forehead and inability to remember last week's episode of Ren and Stimpy?"

Foreman laughed slightly. "I don't know."

"Oh, come on. You're the head guy. All this stuff's in his head."

"What about the hands and feet?"

"Let's assume for a second that the hands and feet are somehow connected to the head."

"Are you trying to be funny, House? Now I really do miss Cameron and Chase."

"No, I'm being serious." House sat down and looked at the board. "He had any cuts in the past month?"

"You're thinking tetanus. It would explain progressive locking of the jaw."

House nodded. "Doesn't even have to be a cut. See if he's had any injuries that he bandaged, covered up, deprived of oxygen in some way. _Tetani _don't like to come out and play when things get aerobic."

Foreman started to walk out.

"Wait." House picked up the papers from the table and tossed them to Foreman. "Give him a cranial CT. Check for Huntington's."

Foreman shook his head. "There's no history."

House laughed. "There never is."

Foreman furrowed his brow. "You feeling alright?"

"Just go do the tests. I'll call Chase and Cameron and arrange you guys a playdate."

-

House stepped into Cuddy's office.

She stood behind her desk and dropped her head. "You bit a patient."

"I nibbled on her."

"You bit her."

"What? Is she suing?"

"No." Cuddy pointed toward the lobby. "But her grandson out there wants to have a word with you." A fit, stocky, dark-haired man in a t-shirt and khakis stood looking around aimlessly.

"Just tell him I was doing some geriatric taste-testing."

"This isn't funny." Cuddy rubbed the back of her neck. "She was--"

"She was eighty-years old. Oh wait, she _is_ eighty-years old. I wasn't hitting on her. She had a legitimate complaint."

"Well, I'm not the one you should be telling this to. Now go explain to him why you bit his grandmother."

-

"Are you Dr. House?" the stocky man asked. He pushed his finger directly into House's chest.

House looked up at him and moved the man's finger. "Why yes. I couldn't possibly imagine who you'd be."

"You scared my grandmother."

"I imagine I did. She has a very serious illness. Usually you can't break that kind of news without scaring somebody."

"You bit her arm."

"I nibbled her arm."

The man huffed.

House bit his lip. "Your grandmother's eighty, right?"

The man nodded. His face grew redder.

"Ok, so we can rule out that I was hitting on her. I was, however, worried that your Alzheimer's-plagued grandmother was doing something far worse to herself than letting a strange man nibble on her."

"What do you mean?"

"I'll assume she forgot to tell you. Your grandmother's a painter right?"

"Yeah," the man nodded. "She's painted all her life."

"And have you watched dear granny paint much lately?"

The man nodded again. "She goes into her studio for a few hours every day. She doesn't let people in much."

House stretched and danced his eyes. "You a betting man?"

The man smiled a little.

"Sure you're a betting man." House whipped out a twenty. "I'll bet you this much that if you check that studio, you won't find a single painted canvas. At least not one done in the last month."

"You mean she's been doing something else in there?"

House faked surprise. "You mean besides painting?"

The man did not look amused.

"Just go home and check it out. And don't let granny stay in there alone anymore."


	2. Chapter 2: Secrets

"It's not tetanus, and it's not Huntington's." Foreman threw a folder down on the table.

"Feels lonely in here, doesn't it?" House asked. He gripped his cane and looked out the window. The sun was setting.

"He's asking to see you."

House looked back at Foreman. "The Hare wants to meet the Tortoise?"

"He says it's something he'll only tell you."

House nodded. "Secrets."

Foreman shrugged.

"Take his blood pressure."

"What?" Foreman leaned forward against a chair. "His blood pressure's fine. We're checking for—

"Take his blood pressure, and make sure you take it for at least," House checked his watch, "four minutes." He stared at Foreman.

"Ok, you've got me, House."

"You ever powerlift? I know it's popular to be the big man on the block. You know, so you can beat up all the other 'homeys.'"

Foreman looked distressed. "Aren't you going to see what he wants to say to you?"

"Our patient likes to prove he's a Greek hero, but the Greeks didn't know about special things like aerobic exercise and electrolytes."

"You think he's overdosed on _electrolytes_?"

House sighed. "Do your job. Take his blood pressure for four minutes. If his hands start flopping like unhappy little fish—

"Then he's got hypocalcaemia."

"Then he's had it for a while, long enough to present neural problems."

Foreman grabbed the folder. "But if you're right, he should be way worse off than he is now."

House bit his lip. "Maybe he already is, and we just don't know it."

-

Cuddy stopped in her tracks. "What are you doing sitting out here?" She looked down at House who was sitting on a bench next to the clinic doors.

"Oh, I thought I'd enjoy the view."

"You're not scheduled for another hour."

He looked up at her. "I always seem to get these epiphanies when I come in here. Helps me figure out what's wrong with the _really_ sick people."

Cuddy looked at him sideways. "You'd have epiphanies if you were dangling naked from a telephone pole."

House was taken aback. "You think I should dangle… naked from a telephone pole? That wasn't in my job description."

"You're waiting on somebody."

"What if I am?"

She laughed. "You don't wait on people. They wait on you."

"Now if only they'd do it naked hanging from telephone poles. If everyone goes where they have great ideas, then you must have a lot of great ideas while surfing doctor dating websites."

Cuddy spoke through her teeth. "How do you know that?"

House tapped his cane on the floor. "You can see a lot from a flagpole."

She turned to leave.

"I'm waiting on the granny's boy."

She turned around, annoyed. "Why?"

"Because it's a funny story."

"Well you should let him know that you never wait on people."

"Not this time." House smiled. "This is too good."

Some bustling emanated from the crowd of people toward the end of the clinic. The stocky man swung the glass doors wide and looked down at House.

House grinned.

The man looked shocked.

"I'm guessing you saw what granny was doing."

He nodded slowly.

"Let's step into my office. Shall we?" House walked the man down the hall. Cuddy followed closely behind.

-

The athlete looked like a pale giant in the hospital bed.

"Now this is going to hurt a little bit," Foreman said while he pumped the blood pressure cuff. "I need to almost cut off blood to your arm."

"Wh-why do you need to do that?"

"It's a noninvasive way of checking the calcium levels in your blood or, more importantly, any lack thereof which may be doing damage."

"What kind of damage?"

Foreman sighed. "I think we should just do the test first and see what we see. We'll go from there."

"I need to talk to Dr. House. Did you tell him for me?"

Foreman started pumping up the cuff. "I told him, but he's a busy man. And if it's medical, you need to tell me, especially if it's something that could affect a diagnosis."

The man shook his head. "No, it's nothing like that." He clenched his teeth.

Foreman looked at his watch. "Alright, we're going to leave this on for four minutes."

"H-how will you know if what you're looking for is there?" The man sweated.

"Your hands will twitch."

"My hands are already twi—

"A lot more than they are now."


	3. Chapter 3: House's Explanation

The patient's hands twitched just as they had been doing since he was admitted that morning.

"Alright," Foreman said. "We're up to three-and-a-half minutes. Think you can stand it a little longer?"

"I don't know, doc. My arm's starting to turn white."

"Your color is fine." Foreman pulled out his pen and started taking notes.

The patient nodded and averted his eyes. The last hints of sun were showing through the window, illuminating the cold medical equipment like tools of the angels. "I've never been married."

"Hmm?"

He looked up at Foreman.

"What are you trying to tell me?"

The man leaned up a little. "I'm saying that I've never been married."

Foreman looked at his watch. "Five minutes."

Besides the normal twitching, the patient's arm showed no signs of change.

-

"So, he's gay," Dr. Wilson said, standing in the hallway.

Foreman shook his head. "Try again."

"Not many other reasons why an aspiring athlete never took a wife. Is he a swinging bachelor? I live with one of those."

"First," Foreman said, "House is not a swinging bachelor. Second, neither is our patient. He's a virgin."

Wilson folded his arms. "No chance of STDs then."

Foreman nodded.

"I'm no relationship expert, but shouldn't there be women all over him?"

"There are women all over him, but they only stay for a little while." Foreman pulled out a chart.

Wilson raised an eyebrow. "Is this something that I'm not supposed to see?"

"This is something nobody should ever have to see."

Wilson snatched the chart. "Yes, but--"

Foreman nodded.

Wilson took in a breath. "Oh my."

-

Foreman and Wilson walked into House's office. He was sitting on the edge of his desk. The grandson sat in a chair. Cuddy was standing next to the wall.

"You're right on schedule," House said. He stretched. "We were about to have story time."

The grandson, despite his large stature, looked nervous and confused in the small chair.

Wilson smiled. "Oh."

House looked down and fiddled with his cane. "Your grandmother's French, isn't she? Or at least her grandmother came from France."

The man nodded. "How did you--"

"We'll save that for the end. Always makes it more exciting."

Cuddy gave Foreman and Wilson a glance.

House looked at all of them. "You know you're on the edge of your seat." He tapped his cane and stood up. He looked down at the grandson. "I usually equate painters with France. I think France had some good ones. They might have had some problems, but granny does, too. Alzheimer's is not an uncommon disease for someone her age. What usually happens is, as the mind breaks down, it will focus on activities that person has engaged in their entire life. In granny's case, that's painting."

The man shifted in his chair. "But--"

"Wait, wait, wait, wait," House said. "We don't want to ruin the surprise for our audience here."

Cuddy rolled her eyes, and Wilson laughed.

"The brain's a funny thing," House continued. "It operates on wavelengths of recognition, recognizing patterns. When we're set in an awkward situation that we've never been in before, we rely on base patterns to feel our way through and come out the other side. Let's say grandma forgets where the canvas is. Then she forgets that she forgot where the canvas is. Maybe it's in the closet, but she doesn't realize that she even has one anymore. She doesn't even know that a such thing as a canvas exists. She'd start painting on the wall, right?"

Foreman nodded. "That's logical."

House smiled. "But Alzheimer's isn't logical. I'm guessing granny has done quite a few portraits."

"Yes," the grandson said.

House leaned in toward him. "And now we know that she's been doing... self-portraits."

Wilson bit his lip.

House nodded to him. "The big, bad oncologist doesn't get what I'm saying, but I bet the neurologist does."

"She's been painting herself," Foreman said.

"She's been painting on herself," House corrected. "What's more is, granny's granny taught her an old French family recipe for keeping her paintings on the wall. And when granny can't find the paint, she reaches for the glue. Unfortunately for her, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, that adhesive, or marouflage as it's called, contains a large concentration of white lead."

"Lead poisoning." Cuddy put her hands on her hips. "Did you treat her?"

"Did I treat her?" House asked. He looked at his watch. "Well, sonny boy here has a few hours until the new magic treatment gets in from Britain. That gives him enough time to go pull grandma out of her study before she turns herself into the next Mona Lisa. Didn't I tell you not to leave her in there?"

The man stood up out of the chair.

"The good news," House said, "is that lately her Alzheimer's has been worsening." He looked at Foreman. "That means momma's madness may just be heavy-metal based and not actual worsening of her Alzheimer's. We'll get her on Dimercaprol and under close observation."

"You sent her home?" Cuddy asked.

House looked around. "Why, I can't remember."

Cuddy glared at him. "My office, fifteen minutes."

Cuddy patted the grandson's shoulder, and the two walked out the door.

Foreman tossed the chart to House. House looked down at it. His face contorted. "He's impotent?"

Wilson took a seat. "He's always been impotent."

House looked confusedly at his cane. "So much for flagpoles."


	4. Chapter 4: Baseball

"You can't fire me. I've got tenure," House said.

Cuddy pounded her desk. "This is abnormal, even for you."

"What, because I let grandma out the door with minor lead poisoning? She's got Alzheimer's for God's sake. She should never have been up here unescorted in the first place." He hobbled forward and smiled. "This is about the dating thing, isn't it."

"The fact that you would even bring that up—

He smiled wider. "No, I won't date you. And now I've got a patient to get back to."

She coughed and took a sip of water.

House turned and walked toward the door. "You should get that looked at."

Cuddy sat down. "It's just a little dry mouth."

He stopped. "What did you say?"

"I said my mouth's dry. From yelling at _you_."

-

Foreman was sitting in the conference room.

House trudged in. "What if it's not a calcium deficiency?"

"We've ruled that out. It's _not_ a calcium deficiency."

House spun the dry-erase board around. He wrote CALCIUM in black letters. "Let's imagine you're a happy little nerve."

Foreman made a face.

"Let's say that you enjoy playing catch with all your other little nerves. It's what you do all day long. You're great. You could make the majors."

He drew a couple of O's and some diagonal lines. "In fact, you're the veteran. The scouts found you first. You're on all the baseball cards."

Foreman shook his head and shrugged. "I don't get it."

House looked up at the ceiling. "You never do." He clicked his teeth. "You're #1? You're #1? No, still don't get it, of course."

"Your name is Acetylcholine." Dr. Chase stood in the doorway. "Acetylcholine was the first neurotransmitter identified by scientists."

House looked at him. "Exactly. Where's Cameron?"

"Dr. Cameron had to stay to get some lost luggage."

"Sure she did." House bit his tongue.

Chase looked at Foreman. "What's the case?"

Foreman handed him a chart. "See for yourself."

Chase looked it over and stopped cold. "Oh."

"And Cameron didn't lose any luggage," House said, "because a certain doctor here _doesn't_ have what our guy has."

"Chronic impotency?" Chase asked. He took a seat.

Foreman tapped the papers. "Chronic impotency as a symptom."

House jammed his cane into the floor. "I know, I know. What could be worse? Possibly having something like dry mouth."

"Dry mouth?" Chase looked harder at the chart.

"Which you won't find on there," House said, "because our patient doesn't have it. What controls secretions in the mouth, Dr. Foreman?"

"The autonomic nervous system."

"And what controls the hands and feet?"

"The peripheral nervous system." Foreman leaned back.

House nodded. "And our patient has twitching in his hands and feet with no sign of a calcium deficiency, but that doesn't rule out the visiting team's slugger. We'll call him Antibody. He attacks the calcium channel with taunts like, "We need a pitcher, not a belly itcher" and equally demoralizing slander. Suddenly Acetylcholine gets scared and can't pitch."

Foreman sits up. "And since acetylcholine is a principal neurotransmitter in the peripheral nervous system whose presence is governed by calcium in the body—

House cracks his shoulders and neck. "His body starts flopping and hopping because of the acetylcholine deficiency. But this also affects other neurotransmitters in his body, not just those on the periphery."

Chase looks up. "His memory loss."

Foreman shakes his head. "Even in a case of peripheral functionality, there's no premise to connect these things with—

"You did a cranial CT?" House asked.

"Yes, and it came back negative."

"Negative for what?" House looked at him. "We didn't know what we were looking for on the first go."

"And we know what we're looking for now?" Chase asked.

-

House rapped his cane on the side of the patient's bed. "You wanted to tell me that you can't stand at attention."

Foreman and Chase stood near the door.

"Huh?" the patient asked.

"You wanted to tell me that you can't salute the flag."

"What?"

"For the record," House continued, "impotency is a clinical symptom and should always be told to your attending physician, no matter how big and black and imposing he may be."

"He told me it wasn't a clinical issue," Foreman said.

"He lied." House tapped the patient on the forehead with his cane. "And if you had told us sooner, you might not be dying right now."


	5. Chapter 5: Curve Ball

"How could I be dying?"

House bit his lip. "We found antibodies that were attacking your calcium channels. This stopped your flow of acetylcholine and by that, I mean communication between certain nerves and muscles."

The man started to sweat. "But how is that going to kill me?"

House shook his head. "It won't."

The door opened, and Wilson stepped in. A cold gust from the hallway passed through the room. "But the cancer in your lungs will." Wilson handed a chart to Dr. House.

House took the chart. "You'll have to forgive my team." He looked at Foreman and Chase. "They're baffled. Me and the Cancer Guy really run the show around here." He glanced at the chart. "You have LEMS. Lambert-Eaton myasthenic syndrome. That's treatable. Unfortunately, a lot of LEMS cases are coupled with some sort of cancer, usually of the lung persuasion."

Wilson moved to the side of the bed and looked down. "It's very advanced, and I'm astonished that you haven't shown any more symptoms than are already present."

House clenched his jaw and looked through the far wall.

-

He walked down the sidewalk toward his motorcycle. Warm, summer air blew over Princeton Plainsboro.

"Even when we save them, they die."

He turned around to see Cameron. She followed her statement with a cursory smile.

Silence passed between them. House continued on his cane toward his motorcycle.

"Do you think they really saved you?" she asked. "Or are you as dead as him, too? One treatable disease and one incurable."

House sat on the bike and stretched. "A cure for muscle death? That's a little hopeful, even for you." He grabbed his helmet.

"From what I've seen," she said, "nothing's impossible."

House positioned the helmet over his head. "Well when you go to pray for me, make sure you ask God to write that one in.

I'm sure He'd do anything for a fan."

-

Author's Note: I'm currently working on a genre piece for my grad school applications. So, I haven't really had time to write or update here. I have one fanfic that I had to completely leave in the dust. That makes for a grand total of two fanfics: one finished, one unfinished. I completed this one because you all gave me some nice comments and reviews. I know you wanted to see more. I'm currently at home for a week (until August 24th), and I have a little free time. I'm going to use part of that time to read and review the people who have read and reviewed mine.

And, like any fan, I'm waiting for Season Three with nail-biting anticipation.

Ryan


End file.
